Under current Ordinance 67600, St. Louis City can shut down your stash house, den of prostitution or other shady locale by declaring it a "nuisance property." You'll get a notification, and if you don't clean up the monkey business, you could get fined, and your building could get condemned.

"Some people would rather pay the fine and not fix the problem," says Ninth Ward alderman Ken Ortmann, one of the bill's co-sponsors. He says the threat of jail-time, or perhaps spending only one day behind bars, could be enough for them to "start managing their property and screening their tenants."

Another of the proposed changes widens the definition of "nuisance" to confront another problem entirely: illegitimate calls to the police.

Along with gambling, prostitution and the drug trade, any house where
someone is continually "making a false report of a violation of the law
to any police officer" would constitute a "nuisance" under the new
ordinance.

"The entire city has a problem" with people calling 911 for questionable reasons, says alderman Shane Cohn of the 25th Ward,
another co-sponsor. Cohn fears that in cases where people truly do need
to call police on a frequent basis, this part of the bill could make
them reluctant to do so. But he adds that the City would still have
discretion to deal with such situations accordingly.